Livestock agent Mick Hornsby reflects on Melbourne's big saleyards

The 82-year-old livestock agent is one of the few remaining people to have owned a business at Melbourne's three major saleyards, and says Pakenham's closure in June 2024 will be a "momentous occasion".

"I worked at Newmarket and it closed, I worked at Dandenong and then it closed and now I'm at Pakenham and it's closing too," he said.

"I don't want to retire, it's a good life and I bloody love it - but maybe I should steer clear of the yards with my luck of markets closing."

The Melbourne-based agent started his career at the age of 16 when he secured a job with agency Dalgety at Deniliquin, NSW.

After four years, he returned to Melbourne and started work at the now-closed Newmarket Saleyards where he later established his own agency, Mick Hornsby Livestock, at the age of 33.

"I've been bloody rapt with my life," he said.

"I got kicked out of fifth grade for shaving, or that's what I tell everyone."

After a few years at Newmarket, Mr Hornsby was sent to Finley, NSW, as an auctioneer at the age of 22.

"One of my bosses said, 'This kid will sell in Melbourne one day, send him up there for about two years' and I ended up staying there for four," Mr Hornsby said.

"I tell everyone, 'I must have been a dumb bastard because I was twice as long as they thought'."

On his return to Melbourne, he joined a private firm, WM McNamara & Co, after the offer of a $6000-a-year salary, a company vehicle and "a good expense account" lured him to change agencies.

"That was a long time ago," Mr Hornsby, who has worked as an agent for 66 years, said.

He relocated his own business to Dandenong in 1987 after Newmarket's closure, and was one of the inaugural agents to operate at Pakenham's Victorian Livestock Exchange when it opened in 1999.

For the last 10 years, he has worked for Nutrien Delaney Livestock & Property and its predecessor, Rodwells.

"Ninety per cent of the people you meet are terrific people, whether they're farmers, buyers or agents," he said.

Mr Hornsby, a father of five, said he never really encouraged his children to follow in his footsteps.

"I've got two boys and people would say to them, 'Are you going to have a go at livestock?'" he said.

"'Bullshit', they would say, 'you have to work in the rain, the mud, the shit and the dust'."

Mr Hornsby's grandfather, Jack Brown, founded the agency Victorian Producers Co-operative (VPC) in the early-1900s and he said that ultimately let him to pursuing a career as an auctioneer.

"My mother would always talk about him," he said.

For a brief period, Mr Hornsby was a silent partner in the Robert Peel Hotel in Collingwood.

"We bought it for $330,000 and the people I went in partnership with said it would make $600,000 in four years," he said.

"We had it two years and three months and sold it for $800,000.

Not long after purchasing the pub, he realised he had a dislike for bar-tending, and as a requirement of the liquor licence, his late wife, Claire, undertook 100 hours of waitressing.

"She was ropeable at me for that, but she was extremely good at it," he said.

He said her death in September 2020 was the most challenging moment of his life, but he was grateful for the support of his family.

"One of my daughters lives around the corner and I go there for tea on Saturday nights," he said.

"She does my ironing and that sort of thing.

"I had never worked a washing machine or a dryer, I can now, but when my wife first died, I had no idea how to do that sort of thing because Claire ran the house and reared the kids and I went to work."

Mr Hornsby said the closure of the Pakenham saleyards would "hurt the little blokes the most".

"It is the odds and sods and things like that," he said.

"Most agents and livestock buyers all mixed in pretty well together, I suppose we're a bit like a family.

"Pakenham offered something for everyone and people will miss that, myself included, but things change so you just have to go with it."